CHAP. IV.] PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY DEFICIENT. 127 



those dogmas arc long since exploded, which asserted the 

 rapture of the first morn and the solidity of the heavens, in 

 which the stars were supposed fastened like nails in the 

 vaulted roof of a hall, and other opinions almost as silly ; 

 viz., that the zodiac has several poles ; that there exists a 

 movement of resilience against the rapture of the first 

 motion; that all parts of the firmament are wheeled round in 

 perfect circles, with eccentric and epicycles to preserve their 

 circular rotation ; that the moon has no influence over bodies 

 higher in the heavens ; the absurdity of which notion? 

 have thrown men upon the extravagant idea of the diurnal 

 motion of the earth, an opinion which we can demonstrate 

 to be most false. 1 But scarce any one has inquired into the 

 physical causes of the substance of the heavens, stellar and 

 interstellar; the different velocities of the celestial bodies 

 with regard to one another; the different accelerations of 

 motion in the same planet; the sequences of their motion 

 from east to west; the progressions, stations, and retro- 

 gradations of the planets, the stoppage and accidents of 

 their motion in perigee and apogee, the obliquity of their 

 motions; why the poles of rotation are principally in one 

 quarter of the heavens ; why certain planets keep a fixed 

 distance from the sun, &amp;lt;fec. Inquiries of this kind have 

 hitherto been hardly touched upon, but the pains have been 

 chiefly bestowed in mathematical observations and demon 

 strations ; which indeed may show how to account for all 

 these things ingeniously, but not how they actually are in 

 nature : how to represent the apparent motions of the 

 heavenly bodies, and machines of them, made according to 

 particular fancies ; but not the real causes and truth of 

 things. And therefore astronomy, as it now stands, loses its 

 dignity by being reckoned among the mathematical arts, for 

 it ought ii . ^ustice to make the most noble part of physics. k 



h That (latrine had been recently demonstrated by Galileo, and de 

 fended by Gilbert. 



1 That is, from west to east, according to the Copernican system. Ed. 



k Baron maps out the entire region of human knowledge, breaking up 

 the old sections, and assigning to each science new boundaries more con 

 formable in his view to strict philosophical notions than the old ; yet he 

 capriciously enough makes mathematics an essential part of metaphysics, 

 or inquiry into forms, and astronomy a compartment of mathematics, and 

 then decries this absurd arrangement as the notion of the age. It 

 is evident, however, that the age was innocent of the charge, and that 

 Bacon snaiched up the idea from the demonstrations which Copernicus. 



